The Senses Cinquet
by la-chevreuille
Summary: Premanga, Preanime. Tres begins his assent from a simple battle android to the ‘something more’ Esther meets later… one sense and series of unfortunate events at a time.
1. Prologue: Groundwork

» Title: The Senses Series  
» Author: **eggads**, Horace! (e-mail: Fandom:  
» Rating: T  
» On Going (WIP)/One-off/Series: On-going  
» Classification(s): Humor/Drama  
» Warnings: Some language, mild violence  
» Pairing(s): Tres/Abel, Tres/various innocent bystanders » Disclaimer: Don't own. Bully for me.  
» Summary: Pre-manga, Pre-anime. Tres begins his assent from a simple battle android to the 'something more' Esther meets later… one sense (and series of unfortunate events) at a time.

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The Senses Cinquet  
By eggadsHorace

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00Prologue00: Groundwork

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The professor had told him he was bored. That he needed a new challenge. That it would help with his admittedly lacking understanding of the human population he was built to resemble. That it would bring him closer to true verisimilitude than he had ever been. 

It was a large project. He'd been deconstructed and rebuilt many times before, but not recently, and he had forgotten how… unsettled it made him, to have the professor chuckle, "You'll only be out for a few days, old chap—" and to be suddenly offline, suspended in a space as cold and dark as he surmised outerspace must be. He did not exist, really. He drifted.

When he opened his eyes again, the professor was there, looking tired but smiling. "Status report, HC-IIIX?"

He evaluated his faculties. Something was different. He couldn't quite understand what was so very different, until his opened his mouth to address the professor's inquiry into his status.

Instead, he said, "Ugh."

The professor frowned. "I'm sorry?"

Tres brought his hand to his mouth and touched his tongue. "Professor William Wordsworth. Is this the result of your experimentation?"

"That depends on what you mean," the professor replied, and waved a hand to indicate the schematics strewn over his worktable. "I've installed the lion's share of the systems needed to complete this project, but I've deemed it inadvisable to turn it all on at once. This is an experiment, remember! I think it best to observe each… program, shall we say? Individually."

"Postitive." But the word felt strange in his mouth. His mouth… what was _wrong_ with his mouth? He ran his tongue over his teeth, then over his fingers.

"I'm starting with the most localized of the senses," continued Wordsworth, somewhere in the room. "Taste, then smell. We'll move on from there."

"Taste?" said Tres, around his thumb.

Wordsworth looked over, laughed. "That's very cute, Tres. Be sure you do that in front of Cardinal Caterina." He turned back to the table, continuing to write notes in the margins of his papers.

"Postitive," replied Tres, sitting up. He considered the professor's tools, lying a small distance away from him in their cold metal tray.

"Now, then. I expect regular reports from you, HC-IIIX! Every eighteen or so hours ought to be enough…"

"Pothitif," said Tres. Wordsworth looked up.

"Tres? Are those my… _pliers_ in your mouth?"

"Pothitif."

The professor considered them, hand supporting his chin while his glasses dangled off on finger. "So?"

"'esh?"

"How do they taste?"

"…tas'?" Somehow a heavier sensation than his fingers, but with the same metallic undertone. The grips were salty, though, and the hinges bitter with grease. Tres pulled them out of his mouth in… distaste, he decided, and set them aside. "They taste…"

"Yes?"

"Bad."

Wordsworth laughed. "Then here is your assignment, HC-IIIX! Find something that tastes good!"

"…good?"

"Yes. Congratulations on your first sense, HC-IIIX. Use it wisely!"

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- Read? Review!

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To those who haven't picked it up yet, might I recommend the manga? It's really much, MUCH better than the anime… it my opinion, that is. It's funnier, more action-packed, and is much better drawn. _Those_ are facts. ,


	2. Taste

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The Senses Series  
By eggadsHorace

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(Um? Somehow I gave the impression that this is a Tres x Esther piece? Pre-manga, pre-anime sort of implies that she doesn't exist in the storyline yet… I do have a semi-maybe-if-you-squint-hard Tres x Esther in the works—the Wolfwood Chronicles. Watch for it! Other than that, not Tres x Esther. Isvanityeh.)

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01Chapter One01: Taste

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As a rule, Tres Iques preferred tasks with clear directives and end objectives. Structured assignments required less processing on his part, and the complications that inevitably arose in the execution of most orders were greatly lessened when one had a set of properly outlined guidelines and commands that one could follow. 

That is why, having been given his mission and sent out into the Vatican (and one assumed, the city proper, if he was to make a thorough survey of these 'tastes' the professor had spoken of) he stood outside the lab door that morning with something like resentment brewing in his normally undisturbed mental processing.

He licked the granite wall meditatively (heavy again, but not much else), and considered what data he possessed concerning the human sense of taste. It was localized in the mouth, in fact to the tongue, epiglottis and soft palate, where approximately 10,000 taste buds interpreted particles of matter as having one or several of five tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and savory, sometimes called umami.

Sugar made things sweet, and sweet was taste sensation most humans seemed to enjoy. Tres considered a recollection of thirteen 3.1x3.12cm sugar cubes in one 4.5 ounce cup of tea, as possessed by Father Abel. The Cardinal Caterina also drank tea, but without any sugar, and Father Havel often complained that the strength she preferred in her pots was too bitter for a normal palate. Thus, humans also enjoyed bitter things. And salty things. And savory things. And sour things. Tres stopped, and sweatdropped. This was going nowhere.

Taste was a sense closely linked with another sense, that of smell. Tres did not have a sense of smell, so much as he possessed receptors in his realistically designed nasal passages that analyzed inhaled molecules for identification purposes. He would not have called the feeling that rose up in him as foreboding, but he did wonder with a certain trepidation how the professor planned to instill in him a sense of smell.

He had always had a tongue. It was required to speak. Right then, it was investigating the doorknob (Metallic again. Salty again). The particular program that allowed his tongue to move in the patterns dictated by the 57 languages he spoke had taken years to perfect. Tres briefly considered how long it must have taken the professor to perfect this 'taste' program, and decided to inquire about it after his eighteen-hour report.

As he understood it, the sense of taste was also closely related to the intake of food. Food was a necessity for the human body, converted into units of heat and used to power it. Tres had no such requirement, but now that he had a sense of taste, food seemed an attractive option for study. One thing of human nature he found most curious was their attention to and obvious enjoyment of their nutrition, and how badly it appeared to upset them when none was forthcoming. Another image, that of Father Abel limp and pale, weakly querying, "Isn't there enough for one sandwich? Half a sandwich? _A single slice of bread_?"

The most logical place to look for food, considering his position, was the Vatican dining hall. However, his internal clock read 10:34:01, meaning that the hall had been closed for 34:01 minutes and would not open for another 01:25:59 hours. He needed to locate a secondary destination for experimentation.

It was with this thought that Father Tres Iques set out to get a bite to eat. However, even though his primary objective was to find food, it did not stop him from tasting his fingers again.

Nor the balcony struts.

Nor the grass in the nearby atrium.

He badly startled an orderly when he appeared suddenly in front of her, closed his hand over the glass of water she carried, and unceremoniously drank it all. He licked the rim. Then her fingers where they touched the glass. Hmmm. Saltier than his.

Her shriek may have pierced the quiet morning for miles around, but Tres was already off again, looking for something else to gather taste data on.

ooooo

The woman he was questioning appeared taken aback, but forced a small laugh. "Well, those would be sweets, sir. Penny-candy. Usually it's the children as buys them, sir."

"Sweets," Tres murmured, storing the information for future reference. The look he was giving the sticky bits of sugar laid out in the stall would have sent a Methuselah running, and was enough to make the sturdy shopkeep nervously edge towards a group of city guards near the fountain.

After wandering mostly aimlessly for the greater part of the morning, he found himself here, in the stall of the free market. The air was laden with tastes of mysterious spices and foods, smoke and perfumes. He had managed his explorations without incident, unless one counted the now known to be inedible candles. Or the pyramids of fruit that became the large mounds of squashed fruit. Or the peppers stall. Obviously, if a taste hurt that badly, it was as much an enemy of the populace as a crazed vampire, and should be treated as such. Neither the slim purple pepper that had wounded him so, nor its red, green or orange cousins would harm again. He'd made sure of that.

"Yes, sweets. Look all you want." Tres remained blissfully unaware of the effort it had taken her to say those four words.

"Thank you," he intoned, and began his search.

Systematically he searched them, trailing a finger over the rows and rows of bright paper, like a shark tasting blood in the water, circling, circling, until his finger came to rest over a small empty patch of wood. Tres, empirically analytic to a fault, wouldn't have been able to explain to himself why he suddenly wanted to shoot something.

"Oh, looks like we're all out," the shopkeep said, not without relief. She continued to speak, but Tres was focused completely on the spot where his 'sweet' had once rested.

A good deal of particles of the 'sweet' remained, too many for the place to have been empty long. Tres considered the stall. Perhaps spare pieces were stored under the display surface? He had often seen this configuration. Experimentally, he tugged at a board.

It came up in his hand.

It was the last straw for the shopkeep. She went off, making a rather large amount of noise and waved her arms energetically, but Tres found himself once again disappointed as nothing was to be seen under the display surface. The frown he was unaware of having deepened.

"Hey, mithster?"

Unusual as the title was, the dirty-faced child was undoubtedly addressing him.

"Yes, citizen?"

"Iths thith wha' you're looking for?"

In her hand, the child held two small, paper-wrapped packets Tres identified as a 'sweet'. He inhaled through his mouth and knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this was what he had been searching for.

"Positive."

The child turned its gaze, down, toeing the dirt, but hand still raised. "You kin havem. If you wan'."

Tres studied the small urchin who bashfully avoided his gaze. "Thank you, citizen."

While he mechanically (a/n: could he do it any other way?) thanked the child, he once again scanned his internal databases, memories and sensory files for anything direct information on this mysterious 'sweet'.

It was odd, he thought, that he knew the taste of it without having ever had it, had know the taste even before he _had_ a sense of taste.

With some trepidation, he carefully unwrapped one of the two, examined the unappealing brown log for a moment, then licked it.

His frown deepened.

The taste was close, yes, infinitesimally close, but not quite right.

Perhaps if he chewed and ate the whole thing?

But at that moment, the Vatican guards, summoned to the scene, appeared at his elbow and, seizing it, caused the sweet to fall from his grip onto the dirt pathway. Tres gazed at it, morosely, as the guard pompously informed him of his orders to escort him to the cardinal's office. Immediately.

Tres submitted, pocketing the remaining candy, but glanced back with some regret at the fallen sweet.

The child, watching, gave a small wave.

ooooo

"What the hell did you _do_ to him?" the cardinal screeched. Upon seeing her, Tres had promptly popped his thumb into his mouth, provoking her poorly modulated question. Father Havel, at his position leaning against the far wall, had almost choked on laughter.

"Ah, err—well, Cardinal, you see—I was—"

"What? You were _what_?" she snapped.

"Bored?" Havel offered, snidely.

"Ig ah meuh speash, Carbeuhel—"

"For God's sake, get your thumb out of your mouth and be quiet!"

Tres complied, a bit mystified as to why he had been ordered to do so in the first place. Father Wordsworth did not appear to have correctly predicted the cardinal's reaction to the action.

The dialogue around him continued. True to orders, Tres remained silent. The greater part of his processing was not devoted to listening to the Professor's verbal chastisement, but the sweet in his pocket. Would it be proper to taste it here, in his superior's office? He had not been forbidden from eating it, and the experiment had not yet ended—although its termination appeared imminent, by the way the large veins were throbbing in the cardinal's forehead.

Decided, Tres pulled the sweet out of his pocket, and had just begun to unwrap the waxed paper when the entrance of another AX member further complicated the experiment's review.

"Cardinal! Father Wordsworth! How wonderful to see you! Tell me, is there tea?" The last was added in a tone of barely masked desperation.

"Oh, shut up. Shut up! I'm surrounded by idiots! The lot of you, idiots!" growled the cardinal, massaging her temples vigorously.

The sweet was unwrapped; he could almost taste it, had little trouble imagining the flavor that would seep across his tongue. Yes, Tres Iques, aka Gunslinger, understood a little better now why humans were so fixated on their nutrition. He was lifting it to his lips...

"Oh! That kind's my favorite!"

Only to have it plucked from his fingers and into popped directly into Father Nightroad's mouth. The priest sucked on it enthusiastically.

Tres stared.

The priest gave an appreciative "Mmm, mmm" sound, making a spectacle of licking his fingers.

Tres's right eyebrow, which was purely decorative and had no expressive muscle attached, twitched.

"Well?" the cardinal addressed Tres, balefully. "What do you have to say for yourself?"

Tres considered this. "Father Abel Nightroad," he intoned, staring at the priest. "You have taken my sweet."

"Erm?" Abel said. "Did you want it for something?"

"It was my intention to eat it."

"You eat sweets, Tres-kun?"

"He does now!" Father Wordsworth proclaimed, then seemed to wilt under the cardinal's glare. "Well, er, for perhaps not… much…"

"…" said Father Havel.

"…eh?" said Father Wordsworth.

Cardinal Caterina's mouth hung slightly open, more in horror at the feeling of the final straw on her back than anything else.

Tres, not to be denied his sweet and recalling some latent information from the 'Complied Usages of the Mouth in Humans (see Article IIXEC for a Study of Methuselan Mouths)' stored on his hard drive, had grabbed Abel by the lapels and initiated a kiss perhaps one step up from brutal, involving his lips, teeth and tongue in the process, and in the end stealing back his sweet as he pulled away. Abel swayed on the spot, eyes a bit glazed, and stood for a moment, blinking rapidly.

Caterina, one supposed, had had enough. "What the hell did you _do_ to him?"

"I didn't tell him to do that!" Wordsworth squealed, bug-eyed. "I didn't input any kissing data! There is no kissing data! None! All it is is complex interpretive sensors implanted in the tongue! I swear! I _swear_! _He did that on his own_!"

The cardinal threatened, Wordsworth begged, and Tres didn't listen to either one of them. He chewed, slowly, carefully, absorbing the sweet's flavor and nuances. He lifted his eyes to Abel.

The priest, caught staring, blushed.

This taste was good.

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Gwen Stefani had something to say about sharing toothbrushes… but, in general, no one except a clueless android would count spit as a flavor.

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Next up: Smell! How the hell will I make a funny, romantic chapter out of smell? Tune in to find out. 


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